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Headteacher
Chris Coyle-Chislett

Email the Office
secretary@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk

Telephone Number
01736 753472

Our Address
2 St George’s Road, Hayle,
Cornwall, TR27 4AH

“Penpol pupils are curious, creative and courageous learners. Our school community believes in authenticity as the foundation of deep-rooted learning. Through our rich and relevant curriculum, we nurture community-minded, forward-facing international citizens of the future.”
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Year 3

Reading and Writing is Magic, and Magic is for Everyone

Our annual Reading and Writing Is Magic Festival has been nothing short of spectacular, filled with fun activities, challenges, and a whole lot of creativity! This week, we’ve been celebrating the life-changing power of reading and writing in every corner of the school, inspiring everyone at Penpol to embrace their imagination and explore the magic of words.

The key theme of the week was ‘Reading and writing is magic, and magic is for everyone’ — a message that has resonated throughout every activity. We’ve focused on the idea that every child has the right to…

  • Be creative 
  • Have a planet to read and write on
  • See themselves reflected in a book
  • Have some choice in what they read and write
  • Read and write for the joy of it

We had the privilege of hosting Cornish writer Ben Rowswell, who led energetic and inspiring assemblies for all year groups. His passion for storytelling was contagious, and everyone was excited to tap into their own creativity. You can learn more about Ben and his work here: Cornwall Adventure.

To keep the creative spark alive, every child has been given their own special notebook — a place where they can write freely and express their ideas throughout the year. It’s a space for independent creativity, giving each child the chance to freely write for the joy of it.

At Penpol, we believe reading and writing are truly magical, and this festival has been a perfect reminder of how important and exciting these skills are. Here’s to many more adventures with books, stories, and the endless possibilities of writing!

Year 3’s Pizza-Making Adventure: A Slice of Fun!

Last week, the Year 3 children in Class 7 embarked on a delicious trip to Pizza Express in Truro to learn the art of making authentic Margherita pizza. The trip linked to their DT and science learning about preparing savoury dishes and digestion.

Upon arriving at the restaurant, the children were warmly welcomed by the Head Chef, who gave them a brief introduction to the history of Margherita pizza. He explained how the dish, named after Queen Margherita of Italy, features the colours of the Italian flag: red tomatoes, white mozzarella, and green basil.

The class quickly got to work, donning aprons and chef hats that made them look like mini pizzaiolos (pizza chefs). The Head Chef guided them step-by-step, starting with stretching and shaping the dough. Next came the layering of toppings. Each child spread a generous ladle of tomato sauce over their dough, carefully sprinkled mozzarella, and finally a sprinkle of dried basil leaves.

While the pizzas baked in the restaurant’s oven, the children discussed what they had learnt from the trip and linked it to their science learning on digestion.

Finally, the moment everyone had been waiting for arrived! The warm, bubbly pizzas were brought out, boxed up and given back to the children ready to be taken home to their families. The trip was a resounding success, blending education with an unforgettable culinary experience. A few children commented on the mini-bus back to school, “This was the best trip ever!”

Year 3 returned to school with happy hearts and a new appreciation for the art of pizza-making. It’s safe to say this will be a day they’ll remember for a long time!

Penpol’s Got Talent 2024

As is tradition in the last week of term, our talented students from right across Penpol School put on a spectacular show for the whole school to enjoy today.  The incredible students taking part in Penpol’s Got Talent showcased their singing, dancing, gymnastics, tap dancing, yoyo skills and so much more!

Year One

Year Two

Year Three

Year Four

Year Five

Year Six

Hayle Schools team up for the 2024 Careers Fair!

This week we were joined by staff and students from Bodriggy Academy Hayle Academy for our annual Careers Fair.  But what would a Careers Fair be without some careers?! Well, luckily we had over 40 different professions represented from across Cornwall, giving our students an incredible insight and inspiration into future job opportunities.

Check out this video to see more from this exciting event!

 

Penpol Celebrates Languages Day 2023!

On Wednesday 4th October, Penpol School celebrated European Day of Languages for its 6th time. We are so fortunate to have so many languages being spoken as either a first or second language by our students.  For this reason, European Day of Languages is a prime opportunity to shine a light on each of these languages which represents our diverse learning community here at Penpol.

Back by popular demand, the French café was a favourite amongst students and staff. Like last year, KS2 students were invited to sample a French breakfast in Class 9 with Mr Emery and his year 4 group. Each class enjoyed singing in French and were then able to order from KS2 students, learning the basics such as ‘Bonjour’, ‘s’il vous plaît’ and ‘merci.’ KS2 students then put their French linguistic skills to the test to then host their KS1 reading buddies in their classroom.

Finally, at the end of the day, Mrs Curnow and Mrs Best had KS1 enthralled with a reading of ‘Goolan’ to celebrate the Cornish language.  In addition, Mrs Best and Mr Jones serenaded the children with songs featuring Welsh, Cornish and French.  Mr Jones and Mr Emery led a European singalong in KS2, which culminated in a school record of 8 languages being sung in one song. This rounded off a fantastic day which marked an important day in the school calendar.

A huge ‘Meur ras’, ‘diolch yn fawr,’ ‘merci,’ ‘gracias,’ ‘dzien dobry,’ aciu’ and ‘obrigado’ to all of those who helped to make the day a huge success.  

Healthy Choices on the Menu at Penpol

Earlier this week, we were visited by educators from the Council’s Healthy Cornwall team who worked with all of ur KS2 pupils . The idea for this session was the empower our children to make their own healthy choices when choosing what to fuel their bodies with. The Healthy Snack Family Challenge is attached below.

The session included 3 different activities: the tasting of different healthy snacks including, beetroot, dried apricot, sugar snap peas and humus; what a balanced diet looks like and how it contains lots of different food groups in moderation; and finally, shattering the myth that healthy food have to be expensive. The children all tasted different foods, with many doing so for the first time.

The children learnt all about the ‘Eatwell Healthy Plate’ and discussed how different food groups serve different purposes and how each are individually important to the growth, development and maintaining of a healthy body and mind.Our Year 5 and 6 pupils also took a more in-depth look at the calorie content of different foods, both healthy and unhealthy and took a closer look at the monetary cost vs nutritional output of each food.

They were particularly shocked at the sugar content of some their favourite drinks! With one even commenting “that’s why were encouraged to drink water!”

All children in KS2 then were gifted a free water bottle to celebrate their participation in which  was some  information to share with parents and a healthy snack challenge, all of which is included below. It has been wonderful to see so may children making healthy choices with their snacks continuing to celebrate the learning they have undertaken in science, PE and PSHE around health and wellbeing.

 

Year 3’s Tin Mine Travels

Year 3 outside Geevor Tin Mine

This half term (25.02.2023), Classes 7 and 8 went on an exciting trip to Geevor Tin Mine as part of their topic for this term – ‘Minecraft’!

We arrived in the morning and put our hard hats on – ready for adventure!

Class 7 line up for their hard hats.

Year 3 outside Geevor Tin Mine

Both classes split into two groups with one going down into one of the mines and the other learning about the different types of rocks and minerals that were mined at Geevor…

The mineshaft was very confined; the adults had to bend down to be able to walk through properly!

    After both groups had explored their respective areas, we swapped over to discover what else the tin mine had to offer!

                         

We were able to have a look around lots of different areas that the miners used from 1911 up until 1990!

We learnt lots of interesting facts about why Geevor was built and how all of its machinery operated – we were also lucky enough to have the chance to pan for gold!

          It was a hugely exciting day packed full of fun, for one and all!

A huge thank you to The Heritage Trust who funded the bus travel to get to Geevor!

3D Printing our Wonderful Winter Ornaments

BUILDING WITH BLOCKS IN TINKERCAD

This half term our Year 3’s have been learning how to use Tinkercad to create 3D models and objects on their computers.  This clever program lets you create anything you like in three dimensions, which can then be sent to a 3D printer to turn digital designs into real world objects.

To start with our students were introduced to the basics of Tinkercad (including how to resize, rotate, recolour and arrange 3D shapes).  They then applied this learning to a series of fun (and slightly bizarre!) challenges – including building a Giraffe in 8 blocks, a favourite food item in 6 blocks, a spaceship with 4 blocks and a self portrait with 2 blocks (and the awesome Scribble tool!).  To make it even harder then only had a few minutes for each challenge!

These fun and low-stake challenges helped the children explore the program and encouraged them to create multiple designs very quickly, rather than spending hours on each project.  That meant when we came onto designing our Winter Ornaments the children were able to rapidly prototype different ideas before choosing their favourite.

But rather than me telling you about that here’s a video from some of our Year 3’s talking about the project…

DESIGN, REFINE AND PRINT

Once the children had designed a few different winter ornaments it was then time to refine those designs to ensure they looked as great as possible (and that they would print out nicely on our printer).

Part of this process involved checking the dimensions to ensure they all fit inside a 60mm box and also the tricky task of choosing which colour combination they’d like to use!

Lastly, we added a hole to the top to ensure our decorations could be hung up if desired.

After that all that was left was to print them out.  An easy task you might think? Well, given we had 113 to print and each one takes nearly an hour it was touch and go whether or not we’d get them all done by the end of term!

Thankfully we managed it and below you can see a gallery of every single decoration designed by our Year 3’s and Year 6’s this year.

DECORATIONS GALLERY

Constructing Egyptian Pyramids in Minecraft

This half term we’ve been building Pyramids in Minecraft Edu in our Computing lessons.  Mr Woolcock and Paul have created a shared world where we were all able to work together and build pyramids for our Egyptian Pharaohs.  We researched what would be inside a pyramid and learnt about the traps and secret rooms designed to stop thieves and included these in our designs.  We even created secret chambers full of canopic jars, golden treasures and scrolls of knowledge for the mummies to take with them into the afterlife.

Welcome to our Pyramids!

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Here are some more photos of all of our pyramids, along with some extra information about each one.

Class 7

Xander, George and Maverick

This is a maze which is to trick the people that try and break in and take all the gold.  There are pressure plates on the floor and when you step on one they open up a trap door and you fall down!  At the centre of the maze there is lots of treasure which was buried with the god Osiris.

Sorrel, luna and noah

Our pyramid is for Thoth.  We made a patten in the wall which was meant to be a hieroglyphic.  We’ve added lots of gold and treasures inside our pyramid along with a red carpet which feels very royal.  We put some chests in there too with lots of important things in them like precious gems and golden objects.

Koby, Lili, Daisy, Xanthe, Lowenna and Frankie

We’ve built secret tunnels under the pyramid so if people try to get in they’ll come straight out the other side!  There are some other traps too that are supposed to catch people trying to break in.

Lexi, Alice and Alice

We put two chambers into our pyramid one is full of treasures and is where the sarcophagus is placed.  The pharaoh would have been buried with all of their treasure.  There are secret tunnels to get into the chambers to stop anyone naughty coming in.  It’s designed to be really scary in the tunnels!

Bobby, Daisy and Casey

This is where the mummy would be placed in the pyramid.  We have put gold inside for him so he can take it with him to the afterlife.  We put torches inside so it’s not completely dark and so he can see the gold in the afterlife.

Fred, Poppy, Charlie and Darcey

We’ve got a staircase inside the pyramid which takes you up to a large maze where people might think the treasure chests are hidden, but it’s a trap!  They’re actually hidden under the pyramid.  This traps thieves inside the pyramid.  We’re really proud of the fact it has two levels and the fact we’ve added ancient books to give the pharaoh lots of knowledge in the afterlife.

Edwin, Logan and Arthur

It was designed so explorers who come in through the entrance will fall into a trap.  There’s an empty chest filled with really rubbish items which will trap the robbers into a chamber.  We’ve made it really confusing so nobody can get into steal the mummy or the treasure!  It’s full of traps and surprises!

Class 8

Grace, Izzy, Merryn and amelia

This is a hidden part of our pyramid where there’s lots of gold and things inside.  There are false lights in a fake corridor to distract people trying to break in!  The gold is hidden in a secret place behind a trap.

Rory, Darcey, Noah and Charlie

We made an upstairs in the pyramid, but didn’t quite finish it off yet.  But there’s also a dungeon room below the main room where there are spider webs, creepy things and stuff like that.  Our pharaoh was the god of the underworld so we made his dungeon look like the underworld.

Massimo and Jack

We really enjoyed making the pyramid!  We thought “what would an ancient Egyptian think about when the pyramids was created?”  We thought the answer would be glory, cool secret stuff and valuable treasure.  On the top of our building there’s loads of gold and I made the Egyptian symbol of life out of gold!  We also really enjoyed making the secret entrances behind the hieroglyphics.

Maddison, Nevaeh and Lucy

I liked creating the portals for each Egyptian God because I could figure out blocks would best show off the different gods.  We also really liked making the secret rooms which were so important in the pyramids to store things safely for the afterlife. 

Zak, Pearl, Isaiah and Ethan

The trap in our pyramid has a little hole in the middle of it, so if anyone is silly enough to walk in the middle they’ll fall through!  Our little room is really important because you can only fit really special things inside it.  There is a secret treasure chest hiding under our bridge!

Sam and Logan

When you first go in through the passageway there’s a real sense of Ra’s power.  We used glowstone to represent the sun.  I liked the front of our pyramid a lot because it’s so three dimensional and it looks absolutely massive – but still smaller than a real pyramid!

Noah, Dexter, Bailey and Koen

The room in the back corner is a secret space where we’ve hidden some gold treasure.  Another room has other important things in it like a backdoor, a desk and lots of ancient Egyptian scrolls.  We’ve also added some exploding traps to stop anyone coming in!

Evie, Freya, Alayah and Everly

In this room the Egyptians could practice their mummifications!  They need to be perfect so that people they were mummifying could get into the underworld.  We also put in a trap door in the so we can get down into the secret room where the mummification happens.